Gambling the Aisle 2017 Chapbook Contest Winner
Way Stops Americana
Joyce Goldenstern
Joyce Goldenstern, a Chicago resident, writes fiction and adapts folktales, and tries
to live by the wisdom therefrom. She is the author of a collection of short fiction The
Story Ends â&#x20AC;&#x201C; The Story Never Ends (ELJ Editions, 2015). She updates her website on occasion: jkayindexing.net

Way

Stops

Americana

Joyce Goldenstern
Chapbook Runners up:

An Ombre Of Absence by Rose Maria Woodson
On Making a Golem by Wes Jamison
Decade by Shannon Bushby
Amo e Canto by JC Reilly

4

Tea by Jude Harzer

5

Eastern State Penitentiary Hospital Wing by Erika Arato

6

Martha Clarkson

Dropped
Before leaving us at one park or another
my mother wrote our phone number
in permanent blue ink on our three wrists
swung open the VW doors, her own hurry
and we unstuck our legs from vinyl
watched that tiny insect car
drive out of our eyes
when we needed saving
strangers called her from payphones
like the time I floated past
the bobbing rope of the swim area
lakeweeds skimmed my back, lily pads parted
skin frying in sun’s fair damage
a man shouted then lifted me, crisp and crying
as I saw the blisters bubble
up like making rice
still she dropped us
with hot dog money and towels
sometimes we’d stay together
on the swings three in a line
me pushing Suzy first
but sometimes we’d twirl apart
split our fears across the park
the day Suzy let herself be pushed
on the merry-go-round by the nice man
doing as I taught her, lie on your back,
hold the bars, head at diamond metal edge
look up to see safe things like sky
and clouds spin, pretend it’s happy to mix
up the world even further
they tried to make her describe him,
time of day, how far he opened his coat,
and why we had to wait so long for our mother,
so long in that chilled police cubicle
but we couldn’t explain even the simplest
of things, the way the world was unspooling
before our sunshot eyes

7

Natalie Jones

The Day We
Saw the place where we all saw that day
In a wave
No, an expanse
No, it was
Is this? This is?
Assign a color to the air
The brain fills
is filled with [ ]
Voice breaks the sound of
an impenetrable sound

8

Before the Sun Rose
Denise Massingill

She found our first home the day before I was born, meeting the realtor out front of an old victorian house,
then following behind to a smaller unit, pink with green trim. The woman’s eyes gazed down at my mother’s
stomach.
“A girl?” she asked.
“Yes.”
The realtor nodded and looked toward the alleyway. In the distance, police sirens echoed off bricks.
“What would you think about getting a dog?” the realtor asked. “We don’t normally allow pets, but we could
make an exception.”
“Dogs eat babies.” my mother said. And it was true, sometimes.
There wasn’t much to move in. My uncle drove over from San Pablo in the morning and helped my mother
set up the crib in one corner of the bedroom.
“From Louise,” he said, laying a blue blanket over the crib mattress. “We have more, but she’s not ready . . .”
His voice trailed off.
The stillborn. It was supposed to be Leon’s blanket.
At night, alone, my mother lay on a twin-sized mattress. The house was hot and the streetlamp lit up the
bedroom window, casting shadows of bars across the floors. She pinned Leon’s blanket above the window. My
blanket.
When her stomach began tightening, my mother turned on her side and cursed the name of the man who
did this to her, or maybe a few names because she wasn’t ever sure. And somewhere between those screams, I
emerged, purple and fat, screaming at her, relentlessly wanting milk, craving songs, needing that switch to click
on when someone becomes a mother but it never did.
In the morning, the realtor returned and found a baby curled in a dog bowl on the front steps, howling. My
mother was gone before the sun rose.

9

Girl Child
Lena Ziegler

On a Tuesday morning I stained my underwear
a streak of rust no one could explain to me quite like
Adrienne. You leak because girls leak when they want
babies. I was ten and I didn’t want babies, and I didn’t
quite understand how wanting babies could explain
the way I leaked, but I understood that being a girl
child meant something special was happening to me
and everyone else was too afraid to tell me what that
was. I could sense the earthly wisdom of fifteen-yearold Adrienne who knew so much I never would, who
experienced the world through splintered perception
I envied for the purity of it. I was ten but I could
recognize the dewy majesty within her, the pungent
ache of her hunger when she grinned at Robert, the
pharmacy tech, each week my mother took us to pick
up Adrienne’s prescriptions at Walgreens, all running
out at different times throughout the month. To our
mother, nothing Adrienne did amounted to anything
other than disappointment. She was something to be
maintained. Controlled.
No one was prepared for the fury within to take
hold of her body like disease.
When I was born Adrienne was five years old and
already proven to be broken. Unable to do simple
things like hold her urine until it was appropriate to
let it go – when some adult would tell her so, pick her
up, and place her on the toilet so she could finally relax
and release the forceful stream from her little body,
sighing relief – out in public Adrienne would force
her thighs together bounce on her toes and scream
blood-curdling shrieks as if paddle-beaten, or kicked
into mushy bruised submission by our father, the
disciplinarian every child dreads disappointing. Our
mother, ever a well-mannered supporter of etiquette,
would scold Adrienne, remind her that she was a
girl child with an obligation to politeness no matter
the occasion. But Adrienne couldn’t help herself. In
the middle of the grocery store, in line at the bank,
in the booth of a seaside restaurant she would cry
out and quickly release, flooding herself the instant
the urge came. My parents were ashamed, unable to
fathom why their precious girl child would continue
to disgrace them this way. When I came along and
mastered the skill of pissing into toilets at nineteen
months my parents celebrated with a privately catered
event.

10

From what I could tell there was nothing Adrienne
could do correctly. At eight years old, she still threw
tantrums, sunk her teeth into the arm flab of her
reading tutor, her eyes smoldering orbs of unchecked
girl child rage. My mother’s muffled sobs leaked
through the house like winter cold and I learned to
shiver at the sound of them. I could never be Adrienne.
I could never be girl child gone wrong.
Smooth-haired, well-behaved, fiercely
independent, with a knack for dressing myself, my
parents found solace in my tightly-wound perfection,
proving them capable of effective parenting. I found
solace in Adrienne – a force of earth-crushing
magnitude, unwaveringly indelicate, laughing, pissing,
howling, punching, biting Adrienne, untethered from
any expectation of existing as the girl child they had
always wanted. Her face squeezed tight, breathless red
frustration with everything: sound, light, color, texture,
the entire world she couldn’t swallow for the sting of it.
She was electrifying.
Robert the pharmacy tech was twenty-three and
awkwardly tall with freckled acne I craved to touch
through the glass pane of the pharmacy check out
window. He was polite and well-spoken if not a little
shy as his brown hair fell clumsily across his forehead.
My mother’s curtness never dissuaded him from
waving shyly at Adrienne who grinned lips wet, eyes
hazy, tapping her fingers against the glass, leaving
behind oily fingerprint signals of her longing. My
mother swatted her hands away whispering commands
at Adrienne: get a hold of yourself. But Adrienne’s gaze
was forever fixed on Robert.
For as long as I could remember Adrienne was
strictly forbidden from coming into my room, so
whenever she managed to make her way out of her
own, quietly opening and closing her door, crawling
through my parents’ room which separated ours,
and finally poking her head through my doorway
and grinning, it was enough for us to erupt in shrill,
sisterly squeals of excitement, waking my parents and
defeating the careful stealth Adrienne had mustered.
But one night, Adrienne snuck into my bedroom,
holding a finger to her lips to keep me quiet, and
made her way across the carpet, stifling giggles as she
climbed into my bed.
I’m going to kiss Robert, she told me. Why?

Because I love him and I want to touch him
everywhere, she said, eyes shining from the street lamp
casting a strip of light across her face as she sat, crosslegged on my bed.
I don’t think mama will let you. Mama won’t even
know, she told me. When will you do it? Soon. So
soon. I can’t wait anymore! She said, almost full voice.
I giggled and covered her mouth with the palm of my
hand. She swatted it away.
Do you think he loves you too? I know he does.
Two days later at Walgreens our mother parked
the car and Adrienne jumped out, grabbing my hand,
pulling me with her into the store. Our mother chased
behind us.
Don’t run! she whispered with all the force of a
shout. Girls don’t run!
After years of handling Adrienne it was a wonder
our mother ever relinquished her hold on us, her girl
children always threatening to misbehave. You don’t
want to end up like your sister, do you? She’d say to me
as if all of Adrienne’s problems stemmed from poor
manners. How could I tell our mother that Adrienne
was everything I wished to be, everything I ached for
deep in my magma center.
Adrienne stopped running, suddenly yanking me
to a stop as our mother nearly collided with us.
Can we look at makeup? she asked. Mother sighed.
What do you need makeup for?
We don’t need it. Adrienne said. We just want to
look.
Mother hesitated, glancing around the near empty
store. It was rare for her to even consider this sort of
request from Adrienne. But in recent weeks, since
that Tuesday morning when Adrienne had helped me
with my rust-stained underwear and mother thanked
her for it, Adrienne had been uncharacteristically
controlled. Fine, Mother said. Don’t touch anything. I
will be right at the counter so I will see anything you
do.
Adrienne grabbed my hand once again, dragging
me through the aisles to the cosmetics section. Rows
of brightly colored tubes, compacts of pink, peach, and
bronze powders, shimmery eye shadows, with names
like ‘café au lait,’ ‘denim dream,’ and ‘pearly pink,’
metallic gold and glittering blue bottles of nail polish
dazzled us. Adrienne grabbed at everything, knocking
them over and onto the floor.
I need something for my lips! She said. Mama said
not to touch anything. It’ll be fun! She said, ripping
open a package of bright pink lip gloss, tossing the

plastic-cardboard casing to the floor. She grabbed hold
of a compact, flipped it open and looked at herself,
quickly applying the gloss and smacking her lips
together. What do you think?
Her eyes glittered as she smiled widely, tossing
her hair like a movie star. You look so pretty! I told
her. You try it! She said, tossing the gloss to me. I
caught it and looked around for our mother, who
somehow always managed to be lurking nearby
anytime Adrienne was about to get me into trouble.
She’s on the other side of the store, Adrienne
said confidently. I followed her lead and picked up a
compact, opening it to see the reflection of my girl
child eyes, lips, cheeks. I unscrewed the gloss and
pressed the tiny wand to my lips, carefully coating
them in pink. Rubbing them together I watched
myself in the tiny compact mirror, examining my
eyelashes, smiling, studying my teeth, looking for
any resemblance, any proof that I was her sister, that
part of us bore the same DNA, the electric pulse that
threaded through her, an unstoppable surge of girl
spirit.
Adrienne squealed at the sight of me and told
me to pocket as many lip glosses, eye shadows, and
nail polishes I could. She kicked away the mess of
opened packages left on the floor and sprinted toward
the pharmacy counter. I ran to keep up. My mother
was browsing the nearby vitamin aisle, her back to
us. Robert was standing behind the window, sorting
through white paper bags of prescriptions, assisting
a woman with a walker and oxygen tank. Adrienne
skipped to the window and waited behind the woman,
bouncing on her toes and waving to Robert. He smiled
shyly and gave a small wave. Adrienne squeaked.
Mother didn’t seem to hear.
When the woman stepped away, Adrienne could
barely contain herself.
Notice anything different about me? She asked
Robert, her hands locked behind her back, as she
swayed from side to side smiling.
Did you get a haircut? Robert asked. Nope, she
said, grinning some more. I’m not sure, he said,
glancing to our mother, still oblivious. But you look
pretty, he almost mumbled. Adrienne nearly yelped in
excitement, peeking over at me.
Let me check your prescriptions, he said.
Adrienne stepped closer to the window and
pressed her fingertips against the glass. She pulled a
folded piece of paper out of her pocket and pressed it
to her lips, imprinting it with a glossy pink kiss, and

11

slid it through the window to Robert. He glanced at
our mother then back at Adrienne.
What is that? It’s for you, she said. I can’t take that,
he said. Why not? I could get in trouble, he whispered,
his gaze shuffling around the near empty store. It’ll be
our secret, Adrienne said smiling, tracing circles on the
glass pane in front of her, her other hand still extended
through the window tapping the note on the counter.
Take it, she whispered.
Adrienne! Mother almost shouted, scampering to
the counter.
Take it! Adrienne yelled and Robert grabbed the
note from her hand shoving it in his pocket.
Mother marched to Adrienne and pulled her hands
from the glass pane. What did she just hand you? She
demanded.
Robert stammered. What? I saw her hand you
something; what did she give you? Robert glanced at
Adrienne who was still happy and still grinning widely,
slowly shaking her head at him.
Nothing, he said finally. She just handed me this
receipt. I guess someone dropped it, he said, showing
our mother a crumpled receipt he must have had
somewhere on the counter. Mother looked back at
Adrienne who just shrugged, unable to contain her
delight.
Are you sure? She asked him again. He nodded.
She sighed. Fine. Are my prescriptions ready?
Of course, he stammered again finally checking the
computer. Adrienne backed away from the counter.
Robert looked up, careful not to break his gaze from
my mother who had fixed him with such a stare I
thought he might burst into flame from its singe. Then
I saw it. Adrienne unzipping her coat, her fingers
feeling for the buttons of her shirt, quickly undoing
them, her impenetrable gaze on Robert. Robert quickly
glanced to her then back to my mother. But Adrienne
continued until her entire shirt was unbuttoned and
hanging open, revealing a small strip of stomach and
a tan cotton bra. Robert looked to her once again,
his eyes widening. Something in my stomach began
to hurt, my magma center unfurling more heat than
I could handle and before I knew it my voice was
erupting from my lungs and I cried out, Mama! and
our mother turned around, her face twisting from
shock into palpable rage. She shouted something.
I’m not sure what. Adrienne laughed and ripped her
shirt open, working quickly to pull it off. Our mother
grabbed her, clenching her fingers around Adrienne’s
arms forcing her coat closed and wrenching her body

12

away from the counter, dragging her through the
vitamin aisle, toward the automated doors at the store’s
entrance. Adrienne screamed, throwing her limbs in
every direction, flailing scarlet fury, her lips quivering
venom. Strangers watched in uncomfortable horror as
my mother heaved Adrienne through the door, barely
able to contain her as Adrienne bit at her, spitting and
snarling, rabid as a dog.
I watched as they exited my view. I walked
through the vitamin aisle. From outside I could hear
our mother shout my name over Adrienne’s curdling
shrieks. Strangers stared at me, the little girl child
separate from her crazy mother and wild sister. I
wanted to take my time savoring this moment – the
quiet, the calm before I would exit the store and
face the fury of my mother, and later the roar of my
father’s belt smacking Adrienne’s bare flesh echoing
through the ripple of her tears. As I neared the store
exit the chaos outside subsided and I knew somehow
our mother had forced Adrienne into the car. Before
it was out of sight, I looked back at the pharmacy
counter. Robert was staring down at something in
his hand, turning it over with his fingers, his mouth
hanging open. My stomach flipped as I imagined
him looking at me like he had looked at Adrienne,
his lip trembling at the splendor of her.
Mother pulled into the driveway and parked
next to our house under the crab apple tree
dropping decorative pale bursts of browning flowers
onto the overgrown gravel. Adrienne sat across
from me in the backseat, her body curled in on
itself, face buried in the car door. The low jingle of
car keys filled the quiet space between the three of
us as mother turned the car off, sucking life from
the humming engine. We sat that way for awhile –
Adrienne in a heap to my side, our mother staring
forward eerily silent, me tracing the lines on my palm
with a plastic tube of lip gloss I had stolen. Adrienne
moaned faintly and mother’s eyes flashed in the rear
view mirror.
Stop that, Mother snapped and Adrienne’s
whimpering subdued. Mother sighed. Your father will
hear nothing of this. Is that understood?
My eyes locked with mother’s in the rear view
mirror and I nodded. She nodded in return.
Adrienne? She said. Adrienne turned her head
slightly so that she too could meet mother’s eyes. Is
that understood?
Adrienne nodded.
Mother stepped out of the car and I followed suit,

but Adrienne didn’t move. I circled around and came
to her door unlatching it for her. When I opened it
Adrienne fell forward slightly, catching herself in the
door frame. Mother passed us on her way to unlock
the side door of the house. Let’s go, she said.
It’s ok, I whispered to Adrienne. Daddy won’t
know.
Adrienne nodded, looking up at me through a
curtain of wild hair. Her eyes were wet and empty.
I stepped forward to hug her and she wrapped her
arms around me. She smelled like the watermelon
lip gloss she had smeared on her lips before kissing
her note to Robert. I let go and stepped back,
brushing the hair from her eyes. On her right cheek
I saw it – a bright pink welt swelling the side of her
face.
Mama? I asked. Adrienne nodded.
*
The following week our mother added a pad
lock to Adrienne’s bedroom. When it came to rules,
typically mother set them, father enforced them,
and there wasn’t much more to say about it. But when
father asked what Adrienne had done mother just said
girl children sometimes needed a little more security.
He seemed puzzled but didn’t question it.
During the day when I was at school Adrienne
went about her regular schooling with mother. But
when I came home Adrienne was often dismissed to
her room and made to stay there until dinner. I never
asked mother why but it became increasingly clear
whenever Adrienne and I were alone and mother
intervened by sending Adrienne to another room, or
to sit on a different piece of furniture, that she didn’t
want us together without supervision. Some evenings
after dinner Adrienne and I would sit on the floor
together and watch television. She never asked me
why I had told on her that day and I never offered an
apology. Things felt different between us. Adrienne
was distant, removed. Her fire had burned to rubble
and nothing was left but the the ashen coals of her
eyes.
But a week later as Adrienne and I sat on the
living room floor watching our father’s football game,
mother told us that we would be heading back to
Walgreens but that Adrienne would be staying at the
house with father. Any trouble you lock her in that
room, she said to him. He nodded not looking away
from the TV. Adrienne looked at me, eyes wide, her

familiar ember glow pouring out of them.
Let’s go, mother said to me stepping toward the
door. I pushed myself up off the floor and Adrienne
tugged at my pant leg.
Find out if he read it, she whispered so low I
could barely hear her. Please.
I stood at mother’s side as she browsed the
vitamin aisle, but I couldn’t keep from watching
Robert who had been unsuccessfully avoiding eye
contact with me since we arrived. My stomach hurt
every time his eyes met mine. I felt myself flush red
whenever he caught me staring.
Can I look at the makeup? I asked. I don’t think
so, mother said. But I won’t get in any trouble, I
promise. Mother looked down at me, a deep wrinkle
between her eyes. We’ll look at makeup together
another time.. After he called our last name and we
stepped to the window, Robert seemed taken aback
by mother’s uncharacteristic friendliness. She asked
him about school and if he he liked working here, so
he told her he had graduated in early May and had
been hired full time at Walgreens shortly after, and yes,
he did like it. That’s why I’m always here, he laughed
nervously. He handed her a paper bag of prescriptions
and she thanked him. Let’s go, she said to me before
turning to walk away. I waved goodbye to Robert but
when I did his eyes widened urgent and he motioned
me to come toward the window. I glanced at mother
who was already back in the vitamin aisle. I stepped
forward.
Where’s your sister? He whispered.
I shrugged, not wanting to answer. He peeked side
to side then out at the store before sliding a folded note
through the window to me. Can you get this to her?
His fingers brushed mine as he passed the note to
me. It burned in my palm. Don’t tell your mom, he
whispered. I shoved the note into my pants pocket
and turned away from him, slowly walking toward
the vitamin aisle where mother stood browsing, the
weight of it sinking each step I took toward her. I
wanted to read the note, show it to my mother, tear
it into unrecognizable shreds. I wanted to scream,
smack the vitamin bottles from the shelves, and
watch them roll down the aisle, skidding across the
tile floor. I wanted to dig my fingers into my hair,
pull it hard, shriek echoes of girl child rage, my
voice thundering and powerful, singeing the ceiling,
the walls, and floor. I looked back at the pharmacy
counter. Robert was staring at me. He smiled. My
stomach flipped and all I could do was smile back.

13

Vitae Essentia by BĂŠatrice Lebreton

14

Laura Ingram

The Veneration of Lace
I.
I suppose God spat me out along with his last loose molar,
fashioned my vertebrae from the spine of
a banned book,
overdue heart held together with library paste.
II.
Saint Catherine of Siena vomited
spider silk, the lacerated legs of locusts,
all the lowercase letters in my name,
Rinsed her mouth with my runny dreams,
aspirated our twin tremors.
III.
I, too, refuse the Eucharist at fifteen
bow my head between
hypoglycemia and hypocrisy,
canonize my second vanishing act,
the first time I tossed my sandwich, untouched,
in the trash on the way to recess-the first disappearance, of course occurring
that off-white witching hour
a nurse unwrapping me from
the crinkled crinoline of my motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s womb,
already crying with colic
misplacing my bassinet
In the illegible light cast over hospital hallways
until an anonymous father found me.

15

Jan Ball

hayride
Surprised to be invited to Marita’s
birthday party since she only knows
her in Freshman homeroom, she asks
Daddy to drive her to the city limits
where the invitation Marita handed
her says the German family lives.
When her father leaves he says, “I’ll
pick you up at ten,” and the hay cart
pulls into the drive-way.
Chester seems to know that she is
his partner since he immediately
puts his arm around her shoulder
protectively then helps her up
the big step into the cart like
a doorman and draws her toward
a corner of the fragrant hay to lay.
She registers the agenda so searches
her mind for techniques she has
employed in Janet’s basement
playing spin the bottle or rotating
partners to moody Elvis or Paul
Anka longing for Diana.
She knows that “basement” group
calls her the little bone crusher but
is unsure if this is peculiar or erotic
so decides to use the same method
tonight, grind her knuckle into
Chester’s neck for an hour as she
kisses him hopefully with passion
while the horses clop-clop along
the leafy, dark suburban streets.
Once back, Marita’s parents beam
and ask how the hayride went in
their German accents. They serve
black forest cake with vanilla ice
cream and Dad picks her up at
10:00 to drive her back to the city.

16

KJ Hannah Greenberg

That Daring Duo
Both the university teacher and the random member of humanity
Responded to diverse situations, embraced people of ethnicities,
Taught them not to: fear poodles, impregnate minors, spread lies,
Rather, host welcome parties, serve miso soup plus gassy water.
Mostly, they espoused that folks involved with cautious kindness,
No matter the cobblestones running through their kitchens, bring
Love, create families. What’s more, all friendships tender shared
Urges, reject “aerial stunts,” presumably Padparadscha sapphires.
When answering other peoples’ problems, the pair succeeded as
Heroes, of sorts. Their landing pages filled with adorations from
Numerous persons, who fled from kowtowing to their bosses.
For the cost of their projects’ labor and delivery, they met fans.
To enable some mental orbits to finish their cycles, they worked
To increase their social standing via discourse, to avail men of
Odd, antiquated mail collection boxes. People, it seemed, liked
Thickly misted organized crime or perpetuated, numbing games.
When visiting middle-aged folks, discounting their assemblages,
They raised no ghost of weight, but tackled redirecting scattered
Thoughts, illusory buffets of calorie-free foodstuffs, comestibles
Whose consumption resulted in accidental death, dire culpability.
Alternatively, if kicking ignoble curs, they produced paperclips,
Profitable changes to finger splints, cotton swabs, ace bandages.
Elsewise, objects from foggy vitrines culled supply house shares.
The offerings of the attractive boys, the tophers, failed to work.
Meanwhile, dedicating extra space for hovercraft balderdash
Resulted in exposure to blighted blooms and incensed spouses.
Would-be linguistic mentors swore to sussing out misconducts
(Judges resolved their design could throttle the full competition.)
Consequently, fresh losses hindered supplying skippers’ rum.
Ideas fetching lawsuits lost status, forced prickly supervisors
To usher in high levels of black boxes, mildew, dark moods,
Heavy handiness; people detest resilience, loathe catachresis.

17

Rachel Caruso-Bryant

Bathroom Ants
They are still marching out from behind the toilet
And into my kitchen in such a line as though
They were passing out sacks of sand
Before the coming flood

18

Jan Ball

Late Arrival/Early Departure
I doubt that the discretely painted
but blatantly floral-fragrant attractive
Chinese female who we saw on the midnight
elevator when we arrived from Hong Kong
last night is washing out her undies
in the turquoise hotel sink this morning
like I am. The totally pixilated apparent
john, pock-marked, warty and questionably
performance-ready probably woke up
with a severe headache and said, “Don’t
worry. Put your panties and bra in this
laundry bag. Write my name on the top
and room 2716 and you can get them
done one hour express. Hang around.
Look at the view of the swimming pool.
It’s on me,” unless she left early.

19

An Interview with Six Artists
Virginia Mallon

I asked Erika what draws her to these condemned places, and what inspiration does she take away from the
rubble of the past?
Erika Arato (aka @Urbexthecat): Growing up, history was my absolute least favorite subject. I was not interested in learning what other people said happened, what I want was to be in a place where history had happened, to
be able to visualize the space in which it happened. I am fascinated seeing the things that were left behind in hospitals or houses where I try to piece together a story for myself about the past.
I also love the art that other explorers create inside these buildings. One of my favorite pictures that I have taken
has graffiti that reads, “drop out of school, READ books.” This photo was taken in the school of a psychiatric center
for children who were mentally ill or handicapped. It taps into the idea that knowledge doesn’t come strictly from
organized institutions, but can be acquired through any media.
School is not for everyone, and no one should feel obligated to force themselves is the message I am getting from
this artist.
Another photo I took in the same psychiatric center shows two distorted faces looking at each other exchanging
the words, “What is insane?” and “What is normal?”
These are simply words that society gives meaning to. What one person thinks is insane may be normal to
another person. All those that were in this center were deemed “insane” or abnormal. It is this kind of art and this
atmosphere that pulls me in and makes me want to continue to search.

20

Drop Out of School, Read Books. by Erika Arato

Dentist Chair by Erika Arato

21

Look into My Eyes by Jude Harzer is a magical mix of symbolism, calling out a larger story behind the portraits, revealing dark secrets and extraordinary faces. I asked Jude about the inspiration for her work.
Jude Harzer: When asked about my paintings, I often respond by saying that, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I paint who I am.â&#x20AC;? My recent
subjects are indeed a reflection of my ongoing investigation of personal memories and identity. Although they may
seem emotionally enigmatic, I rely on the eyes of my subjects to engage the viewer and reveal emotions that might
otherwise remain masked.
Recollections of my childhood home as a dark, unsafe and noisy place continues to inspire my work but does not
necessarily dictate the content of my paintings. I recall being a silent, invisible and very interested observer of adult
behavior. My perception was most definitely skewed by fear and a grave sense of helplessness but I watched and
waited with the keen eyes of a confused child craving stability and understanding.
I remain to this day, captivated by people, their facial features and body language, knowing that appearances
often conceal the inner life of the individual. Eye contact is one of the most profound modes of communication,
prompting intimacy and connectivity. However, when a direct gaze is uninvited, anxiety and aversion may result. I
suppose my choice to portray my subjects staring, is a deliberate attempt to command interaction between sitter and
viewer.
I am always intrigued that when I portray adolescent females in particular, a much more intense response is
elicited. Perhaps it is my subconscious challenge to have others see beyond the surface, to look into my eyes and to
know the story of a life lived. It is within these stories that the genuine richness of human experience and existence
lie.
I paint mostly in oil. My figures dominate the space. I do not always know how the paintings will unfold but they
typically begin with a subject whom I have photographed for reference. I rarely stay true to the likeness of my sitters
but they provide a resource for light, posture and expression. I have a wealth of models, including my own daughter,
who I photograph because they simultaneously represent innocence, vulnerability, strength and sensuality. I am
always drawn to their eyes. I know their stories. This matters to me as I work. And so I invite you, to look into my
eyes

Crowning Glory by Jude Harzer

22

The Wait by Jude Harzer

23

Béatrice calls upon lineage and legacy in her Threads of Thoughts. She shares with us the story behind the
symbolism and the many faceted traditions influencing the creation of Au Fil de la Parole (Threads of
Thoughts).
Béatrice Lebreton: My process of art making has always be driven to tell a story. I find my main inspiration in my multicultural heritage, researching African and other ancient cultures for histories and traditions. I aspire
to take the viewers on a spiritual journey, to let them marvel, contemplate the images and find part of their own
spirit and culture.
It is a story with layers of narrative, revealing the passage of time, history and dealing with the female image,
women’s position, contribution and identity. Sometimes it pertains to women of African ancestry and other times
to women in general. So the work is political as it makes direct references to these struggles. It also develops into the
narrative, creating stories from a modern “teller”.
I explored my journey as a woman of mixed heritage in search of a sense of belonging, so fragile in the diaspora.
I looked to mythology, Science, Nature as they exist in every culture and are timeless themes. I like to address issues
metaphorically, rather than in a more direct or obvious way.
Different materials are used (beads, threads, fabric, shells….): I am interested in the provenance acquired by
materials in their original form and by the history they retain. Patterns, traditional symbols, textiles…. act as a trigger for emotive response and add a tactile touch. They are painted “statements” that illustrate ideas about kinship.
Issues become veiled under these marks, waiting for the viewer to lift each layer. Some elements are traveled over by
the tension of needlework. It creates a moving space and a rhythm is born from these signs. The thread and beads
become writings, bead after bead and stitch after stitch, giving the canvas the power of a language stretched between
the limits of the imaginary and the history. The rows of threads and beads serve as transition and connection between the stories. My aim is to make cultural connections, investigate cultural identity and hopefully work towards
common understanding.

Anima Mundi by Béatrice Lebreton

24

The Fire Next Time BĂŠatrice Lebreton

25

I am always curious about the where and why of Anneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work, especially the Home is a Privilege series. The connotation of the words home and privilege can invoke an array of responses, how do these words relate to her art?
Anne Murray: My video poetry work is about borders and identity. I see the need to evaluate and establish cross
currents of culture with a presence of mind and careful consideration of different value systems globally. My work
addresses these concepts from the personal to the national and international. Presently, many artists and curators
are crossing boundaries by creating shows outside the realm of the material world, in the netherworld of the internet
where nations are nonexistent. It is in this place of flux, of flow and intervention where many of my works are
installed, video poems accessible only to those who have internet and live within a realm that allows the free travel of
thought across servers without restriction.
Home is a Privilege, is a video poem about the discovery of privilege of the feeling that one can never really be at
home on this planet, our souls, and very thoughts free to travel the universe, while we search for a place to call home,
we realize that it is available only to a few as a concept, as a construction. But upon reflection, one discovers that
home is everywhere.
Was the notion of self, place and belonging a theme that was developed in your travels or was it what launched
the creative search?
My research on identity and borders began about 30 years ago, when I left my parent's home to go to Parsons
School of Design in Paris. There I was faced with the "overview effect" that astronauts often remark upon, a feeling
of a universe larger than oneself as one looks back at the blue planet, which is our Earth. I looked back at my history, my religion, my traumatic childhood, and discovered that identity is often a constructed tower around us, a
citadel on a hill, made to look whole, yet hollow inside with windows through which we can shoot arrows to protect
ourselves, or with the chance to descend into another point of view or climb to look out at the vastness of our world
and all the possibilities. I did all of these things at different points with an awareness and presence to the process,
although it often took its toll.
All artists have to do this, they extend until they are exhausted, recoil, and repeat the process. This recent work,
Home is a Privilege, focuses on the parallel between my own travels and projects living for years without a home and
the mass migration causes by war in Syria. I was contemplating how it is to not have any sense of home, of a safe
place to go, and then I realized that I had grown up with that same feeling, having lived in a household filled with
domestic violence.

Home is a Privilege (Film Still) by Anne Murray

26

Home is a Privilege (Film Still) by Anne Murray

27

Rachel Sagerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work invokes both ancient and contemporary realms, with sources of inspiration and passion coming from the Pennsylvania earth itself. Rachel reflects on her muse, and passion behind The Ruins
Project, sharing how both she and the project are grounded to place.
Rachel Sager: I dig deep, both into my personal shortcomings and into the ground itself for artistic material.
Much of my work is built from the building blocks of what lie beneath my feet in the form of humble sandstone,
limestone and coal. One of my greatest pleasures in life is building relationships with these raw materials and
transforming their pieces into avenues of geologic communication. Simply put, I love to chop up rocks and build
intuitive lines with them.
The word grounding holds several meanings for me, as both a human being and as an artist. My sense of self
is grounded in the place I was raised and on which I have chosen to build my life. I read a lot about the value of
globalism, the global economy, and the smallness of this planet we all share. I understand and respect the concept.
I have enjoyed interacting with the beauty and people of far flung places so different from my little patch
of earth. But I have very consciously chosen to commit my artistic voice to celebrating the complexities of a
heartbreakingly beautiful, forgotten corner of this country. Identifying so strongly to a specific group of people
though, does not mean that I value the group more than the individual. Maybe more than any other philosophy, I
believe in the absolute power of the individual and her imagination. So much so, that I think each individual has the
power to re-create the world. Once a person realizes this truth, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like the ground has opened up and there are no
limits on what can be illuminated through a clear mind and soul.
I have enjoyed my artistic journey so much so that it sometimes hurts (in the good way) to acknowledge that I
have chosen the sometimes dangerous life of the artist. Not fitting into the lines of established boundaries can be a
risky thing. The Ruins Project stands to date, as my favorite example of the power of an uninhibited imagination. I
am slowly transforming the ruins of an abandoned coal mine processing plant in term mosaic installation. With the
help of artists and students from around the great wide world, I am helping to make connections between two very
different groups of people; the 19th and 20th century coal miner and the contemporary artist. Strange bedfellows
to be sure. By telling stories of what was and watching stories yet to be, unfold, I find myself the witness to a truly
remarkable and new story.

The Ruins Project by Rachel Sager

28

Political Statement by Rachel Sager

29

I spoke with Dasha Ziborova on the source of inspiration for her series Chronicles of Forgotten Wars and the
curious launch of this project during travels in London…
Dasha Ziborova: I like to draw inside vintage books. Chronicles of Forgotten Wars started as a travel journal.
I took an old poetry book by Robert W. Service with me to London, planning to make some drawings of English
gardens.
At some point, on a train to Hampton Court Palace, I became curious to see what the book was about, and upon
opening it, I discovered this passage: “Oh I called him all the night-time, as I walked the wood alone; And I listened
and I listened, but I nivver heard a moan; Then I found him at the dawnin’, when the sorry sky was red: I was
lookin’ for the livin’, but I only found the dead.” Robert W. Service, a British-Canadian poet and writer, dedicated
this book to his brother, killed in action in 1916.
In his book he “found the dead” across three continents in all kinds of surroundings. So, my first drawings were
images of magnificent flowers and European gardens contrasted with figures of soldiers fighting and dying. But with
time, this little book project grew up in size and volume, and I started to experiment with large scale and different
media (my latest art works in the series are 5 by 6 feet long, and are painted on canvas with stucco covered with
wax.) The project also stopped being a romantic notion of European wars of long ago; it developed into meditation
on men at the grisly war with Nature with the Nature furiously fighting back.

Unlikely Alliance by Dasha Ziborova

30

Rape of the Sarraceniaceae by Dasha Ziborova

31

Tell My Mother I Saw the Object
Susan Montag

Vince showed up on the first day of our junior
year, a newcomer. He was tall, and let’s be honest,
kind of geeky, wearing flood pants and thick glasses.
He didn’t stand much of a chance in the social
Darwinian culture of southern Iowa of the early
‘80s. He was also wearing a T-shirt for the band
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, which was
neither AC/DC or Lynyrd Skynyrd. So that was not
okay. On the second day, Jason Khul, whose father
owned the Ford dealership, called him Princess
Vincess, which pretty much cinched it. He was out.
Never mind that his parents had moved to town
from Baltimore to teach at the local community
college—history (his dad) and art (his mother).
He spoke strangely, could draw well, seemed
uncompelled to violence, and listened to bands with
names they did not know. He was not from here.
Vince may have been a geek and whatever else
they called him, but I was a scumbag and a slut.
I was a scumbag because my dad drove drunk
and killed Kent Carlson, the guy who used to
own the dry cleaners. My dad also died, but that
didn’t absolve me. Then my mom left town with
Glenda Jackson’s husband, leaving me with my
grandmother. This all happened by the time I was in
eighth grade, so my scumbag status was set in stone
by the time Vince showed up.
I had been a slut since I was a freshman. I don’t
know if this was a nationwide phenomenon at the
time, but where I lived there was a fad where the
boys would grab their own crotches while making a
kissing noise as a way to insult a girl. It was sexual
harassment, plainly; it meant suck my dick. We were
told that was just the way boys acted and that we
should ignore it and they would quit. But instead
of ignoring Bart Sanderman when he grabbed his
crotch at me in the hallway one day, I grabbed my
own crotch and made a kissing noise back. Bart
Sanderman’s mouth fell open in abject shock that
I could be so brazen, and he rushed off to tell the
others what I had done. By the end of the day I had
gone from merely weird and scummy to slutty, and I
stayed that way for the rest of my school career.
Vince and I didn’t pay much attention to each
other right at first, but after Christmas break, we

32

ended up in Sociology together. The teacher, Mr.
Brownrigg, had a nearly unbearably monotone
lecture voice. Vince made a sketch and then
tilted his notebook toward me. He had drawn an
advertisement for “Brownrigg in a Bottle—a sleep
aid, sure to knock your ass right out.” That did me in
somehow; I was immediately in love with Vince. He
was surprised by that reaction, but he seemed happy
to oblige me.
That summer, the one between our junior
and senior year, I would steal cigarettes from my
grandmother and we would smoke them at the
cemetery—not the one where my father was buried,
but the older one outside of town, the one that
had all the worn stones for children who died in
the 1800s. We would walk around looking at the
stones and having subversive conversations about
the nature of reality, and sometimes when we were
pretty sure no one was going to be around, we’d park
his car in the very back part of the cemetery and get
it on. So finally, I could actually do something slutty
instead of just be thought of that way, and I liked it
a lot.
*
This story is really about Moira, though.
I worked at a grocery store when I was in high
school, so when I was not with Vince or at school,
that’s where I was. Moira would sometimes come in
and buy a whole shopping cart full of candy, usually
chocolates. She would take every box of chocolate
covered cherries off the shelf, every box of Russell
Stover’s sampler packs, and she would buy them
all. She also liked red licorice. Moira was tall, and
despite the fact that she obviously loved sweets, she
was bone thin. That may have been because she
constantly walked around town instead of driving a
car, even when it was very cold outside. Almost any
time of the year, on any given day, you might have
seen Moira walking around town in her clothes
that hung on her like she was a wire hanger, her
long gray ponytail swinging against her back.
Moira was famous in our town, not just for
walking around, but for doing odd things. Once

she went into a local restaurant that had a piano,
and she started playing it—except she had no idea
how to play. She just pounded on the keys. Glen
Manley, the chief of police, showed up and tried to
remove her, but Moira grabbed the tip tray from
the piano and hit Manley over the head with it. She
was arrested but they just released her to her son.
Everyone knew Moira really didn’t mean anything
by it, and anyway, she didn’t hit Manley hard
enough to hurt him.
“She should not have had all them kids,” my
grandmother had said. “She went haywire after
that.”
I wasn’t old enough to remember Moira before she went haywire. But I did know her story,
because everyone knew it. Moira had gotten married when she was a young woman and she had
five children and then her husband left her—and
after that she walked around doing weird stuff.
Her children scattered around the country after
they grew up, except for the one son, John, who
stayed in town. Moira and her son John could often
be spotted together at a restaurant or sitting at a
picnic table at the park, and they seemed to be
comfortable in each other’s company. Moira usually looked solemn, but John smiled as he listened
to her talk. Sometimes he even laughed. He didn’t
seem to be laughing at her, but enjoying what she
said. John was the one who picked her up from jail
when she hit the cop with the tip tray. He’s the one
who bought her real groceries when she spent all
her money on chocolates. Sometimes, her neighbors said they could hear Moira yelling at John
when he came to visit her, but when you saw them
together in public, things generally seemed okay.
John worked for the city. He was in charge of getting projects done. Like when underground pipes
needed to be replaced, he would dig. That’s how he
died that summer, actually. He was in a hole that
collapsed and he got covered in dirt. I remember
hearing the sirens that day, and listening as my
grandmother talked on the phone about what had
happened. “Oh no,” my grandmother said. “Oh,
poor Moira.” Whenever anything like this happened in our town, everyone was on the phone
about it.
They had tried CPR on him, of course. He died
anyway. But that was not the whole story. The
whole story is that at one point, he was revived. He
sat straight up in the back of the ambulance, and he

said to the paramedic, “Tell my mother I saw the
object.” Then he died again for good.
No one at the hospital knew what that meant—
“tell my mother I saw the object.” They even argued
about whether or not John had actually said that.
Could they have misunderstood? Or, they speculated, was he just saying nonsense because his brain
had been deprived of oxygen? They argued about
whether or not they should repeat these words to
Moira. She was, after all, already quite confused
about the nature of reality. Why say some weird
shit to her that meant nothing? Why not lie and
say that John said, “Tell my mother I loved her.”
There was discussion among the paramedics and
nurses and the chaplain. The details of this discussion filtered down to even people like me, a high
school girl who worked at the grocery store. My
grandmother heard it somewhere, probably when
she was getting her hair set. From churches to bars,
everyone in town knew about what John had said
in the ambulance, and about what happened after
that.
In fact, at first no one would tell Moira what
John said. But after they told her John had died,
she just sat there, in that room at the hospital
where they take people to tell them bad news. Her
brow creased and she pursed her lips as if considering something very unusual. She stayed like that
for so long that people grew uncomfortable, and
then a couple of the nurses and the EMT and the
chaplain decided, well, maybe we should tell her.
Perhaps their curiosity got the best of them. Maybe
they wanted to know the answer to the question
that had started needling at their brains. What was
the object? So they went into the room where she
was sitting.
“Moira,” one of the nurses, Margery Klingelhutz
said, squatting down in front of her. The others
stood back. “In the ambulance, after John was revived, he said to tell you something.”
Moira looked at her. “What did he say?” she
asked.
Margery told her. “He said, ‘Tell my mother I
saw the object.’ ”
“Ah-ha!” Moira replied and put a boney finger
into the air like an explanation point.
“What does that mean, Moira?” Margery asked.
“What is the object?”
“It’s everything,” Moira said. “It means he saw
everything.”

33

*

Vince and I became sort of obsessed by the
object.
We walked around the cemetery talking about
it. We wondered what John had seen. We wondered
how it was that Moira had known about it, and
why she told her son about the object before he
died and saw it for himself. We began to imagine
that all those times we had seen Moira and John
hanging around together at the Happy Chef or the
park, that Moira had been talking to John about
the object, and maybe that is what had made him
laugh. Maybe John had said, “Oh mother, you and
your object.” But then he had seen it for himself.
We wondered if seeing the object was beautiful or
terrifying or maybe both.
Eventually, we got it in our heads that we
should talk to Moira—that we should go over and
knock on her door. We knew that when someone
died, people would show up with food. Neither
one of us knew how to make a casserole, and we
didn’t want anyone to know what we were doing
anyway, so we gathered stuff from the kitchen at
his house and took it over to my house, and we
surreptitiously made Moira three ham and cheese
sandwiches with mustard on white bread. We cut
them kitty-corner and put them on a paper plate
and covered it with plastic wrap. Then we smoked
a joint because that seemed like a good idea to us,
and we walked over to Moira’s house.
We knocked on the door. Moira opened it
instantaneously, like she had been standing there
waiting for us. We stood holding the plate of ham
sandwiches, and she stood frowning at us. I felt
suddenly terrified.
“Hi,” Vince said, and his voice cracked. “We
brought you some food.”
Moira remained uncertain, but she seemed
to relax. She gave a long, considering look at the
plate, then reached out to take it from Vince.
“Thanks,” she said, and then she closed the
door in our faces.
Vince and I turned and looked at each other.
“Fuck!” he said. We had not considered this as
a possibility. We just stood there looking at each
other, a little too stoned to contemplate our next
move.
The door opened again. “What do you want?”

34

she asked.
I attempted to explain. “We just wanted to
say—”
“That we are sorry about John,” Vince said.
Moira stared at us. Her eyes were an odd
electric blue. I had never noticed that before.
“And we were wondering if we could talk to
you—” I said.
Vince finished for me: “About the object.”
Moira raised her eyebrows. After a second, she
said, “Come in.”
Vince and I were not surprised by the way
Moira’s house looked. We had heard stories about
it before. Today we would call her a hoarder, but at
the time, back in the ‘80s, none of us knew there
was a word for it. Moira’s house was sort of a midlevel hoard, I’d say; it was not packed to the ceiling,
but we had to follow narrow trails through piles
that were about shoulder high. From the looks of it,
most of the hoard consisted of books. We followed
her to the back of the house to the kitchen. The
table had some space, so we sat down. She took the
plastic wrap off the plate and started eating one of
the sandwiches.
“Mmmm,” she said. “Very good.” We sat there
while she finished it. Finally she said, “You want to
hear me say some crazy shit, don’t you?” We didn’t
say anything; we just sat there like the dumbasses
we were.
But then she actually started talking. At first,
she talked about her neighbors who she suspected
of spying on her; she transitioned from that into
talking about Foucault. Neither Vince nor I had
ever heard of Foucault, but Vince would become
obsessed with him shortly after this. Finally, she
told us about the object. The object, she said, was
all of time—the past, present, and future, existing
simultaneously. It was a solid, physical thing—a
thing that one would be able to stand back and
examine, if one had the correct perspective from
outside of it.
“Yesterday is still there,” she said. “It’s always
been there. And so has tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow is already there?” Vince asked.
“Tomorrow is still there,” Moira said. “It’s
always been there.”
“Where is the object?” I asked. “Like, floating
in space?”
“Oh hell, I don’t know,” she said. She took
another sandwich off the plate and started eating it.

Then she said, “You guys need to leave.”
So we did. But as she was walking us to the door,
she said, “Oh, one more thing you should know.”
We both turned and looked at her.
“The object is more than one reality,” she told us.
“There are millions of realities in the object. In some
of them, you exist, and in others you don’t. Some
are just slightly different than this one. In some of
them you were alive for a while but you are already
dead by now, like maybe you got hit by a car when
you were five years old. In some of them, there
is not even any life on Earth. In some of them,
dogs evolved more than monkeys and dogs are in
charge.”
“Dogs are in charge?” I said. Why this was the
detail that stopped me short, I’m not sure.
“Well, wolves are. They farm us,” she said. “We
are their food.”
“That’s kind of fucked up,” Vince said.
Moira seemed not to be offended. She shrugged
like, eh, what can you do? “Yeah,” she said. “So
there is not just one tomorrow that has always been
there, there are a billion tomorrows. Who knows
how many. I don’t know, because I only exist in
some of the realities of the object, and I can’t see
very well into the other ones. But I do know they
are there, and I know the object is really, really
big.”
We were silent. Then I said, “Thanks for telling
us about it.”
“Can you bring more sandwiches sometime?”
Moira asked. We told her we would.
*

We didn’t get to bring Moira more sandwiches,
though, because about a week later, she moved
to Illinois to live with her daughter. She was not
happy about it. I know because my grandmother
heard from someone who heard that Moira was
yelling at her daughter that she didn’t want to go.
Moira’s daughter hired Jim Calvin, a local junk guy,
to throw all Moira’s books into dumpsters. Vince
and I walked by and saw Jim doing it, and he told
us the books couldn’t be saved because they were
covered in mouse shit. When he wasn’t looking,
though, Vince reached in the dumpster and took a
couple of them. They didn’t have any mouse shit on
them, as far as we could see.
There was a break up, eventually, about six

months later, between me and Vince. Of course
there was; we were just a couple idiot kids. It was
a heartbreaking one, though—one of those that
goes on and on over months. Jealousies had been
sparked, somehow. Angry words exchanged. We
hung up on each other, called back, reunited,
fought again, broke up again. There had been
lingering hopes, but then I went out to Pizza Hut
with Tonya Christian and her older brother Gary,
who shoved his pepperoni-flavored tongue into my
mouth as we were in the parking lot after we ate,
and Vince heard about that and then it was over
for good. We became heartbroken enemies. We got
through our senior year; Vince went off to Iowa
City to the university, and I stayed in town and
went to the community college and took a history
class from Vince’s dad. Eventually I moved away
too, and we lost track of each other.
Of course, modern life being what it is, we are
Facebook friends now, so I know he’s married and
that he has two sons in high school, and that he
teaches philosophy at a college in Baltimore, near
where his family lived before his parents came
to teach in my hometown. And he knows that I
moved to Minnesota and that I’m a nurse and
that I’m divorced, that my kids are grown, that
I have a dog and a two-year-old granddaughter
who I take a lot of pictures of. Neither of us is as
skinny as we used to be, but who is? I don’t know
if Vince still thinks about Moira and the object.
Even though we click like on each other’s photos,
we don’t really have a lot of conversations. But
I know that I think about it. I think about the
other realities where things just went a little bit
differently, the ones where we managed to stick it
out like some high school sweethearts do. In those
realities, different children were born, different
lives lived. Who knows how it might have gone.
But at least it’s good to imagine that, even if this
is the only reality where Vince and I cross paths,
the summer of 1984 might still be there, that he
and I might still be walking around out in the old
cemetery smoking the cigarettes I stole from my
grandmother; we might still be parked back by the
trees learning how to be lovers. I can almost see us
there, like bugs caught in amber. The object might
have a lot of bad things in it, a lot of sadness, a lot
of suffering, but at least it has this too.

35

Annie Blake

Inuksuk
i want to fly to the other side of new york take you with me if i can but planes over water
can fall the way you are sliding off cliffs of glass not because they are transparent
but because i am cold you unclothe to avoid the rock sitting in your neck i walked on water
once to save you phobias prevent me getting who i secretly wish for
when i was a physician i showed you how to put scissors into her small hands to accelerate
fine motor development you told me she couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be trusted because all we did was sleep
explicitness in the art of cradling children is essential to form rocks we roll ourselves in
to climb a hill with a plane to learn to thrust adequately into skies to resist
the land of themes of those who rob scissors for reification to never land
in the land of the neverending i was taken to a hot place with colorful doors
i was an inuit praying in a desert asking for forgiveness with my body that preys on
the fragility of small things this is not the same as dissecting them to become the orientator
when there is only wet sand and barbed water the inuksuk when i come back for you
in the dark

36

Hostile Dreams by Dasha Ziborova

37

The Great Sandstone Mountains by Rachel Sager

38

Suzanne Cody

Wedding
Here is a hand
Here is a snapped stick
This is a tin cup
Here is a mouth
An unwritten letter
A box of hollow
Here is a silver ring
Here is a bone
This is a hatchet
Here is a long row
Here is a promise

39

Looking for Love in Empty Spaces
Maj Ikle

Her name is Hel and my dyke life begins the day
we climb into bed and even though we are fuck naked,
it isn’t my bed or hers. It is a mattress on the floor of a
north London squat.
It is the summer of nineteen eighty-two, Boy
George is Top of the Pops asking us if we really want to
hurt him.
Margaret Thatcher has already declared war on
Argentina in order to distract us from the strikes back
here. As young feminists we are in a state of shock to
realise that women are not fundamentally kinder than
men.
We are the most educated generation of girls
that has ever lived and yet we are being groomed for
motherhood or sex work. Those of us who are not
interested in either, try ducking and diving, fucking
and skiving, bunking the trains, living off chips and,
whenever possible, filling our pockets with free toilet
paper.
I meet Hel picketing the Fallen Angel pub. Their
management is attempting to bring about an end to the
women’s evenings because dykes never have enough
money to spend at the bar.
As an orange and pink sky turns the world DayGlo I listen transfixed by Hel’s fast talking, real life,
furious working class politics and I know enough to
know that I am dropping out of my degree in sociology
to learn what this woman here has to teach me about
how capitalists fuck us up.
She takes me back to her squatted council flat,
through the door with its fragile, fluttering legal notice
informing the police they will have to go to court to get
us out.
We are both just seventeen, looking for love in
empty spaces, young enough to be used to ignoring
other people’s taste in wallpaper. It is a DIY door
lock away from being street homeless but for us it is
everywhere we've ever wanted to be. It is an end to
the furious fumble fucks, with our backs pushed hard
against toilet doors stopping the inevitable banging
and barging in. We are safe now because we are alone.
My first night of real sex and I am hard in love.
Hel is a boyish Fiorucci angel with fat cheeks; her
lips are suckling pert places to press my aching breast.
She is intelligent, with wide-awake eyes that follow

40

everything, and politics she will one-day abseil into the
House of Lords to defend.
Hel’s body is as Rubenesque as her underfed
lifestyle will allow. She lets me take my time to stroke
her with my lips, my hips and finally my fingertips but
eventually she insists that I go inside. I tremble as I
slowly push my finger into her slippery cunt but I don’t
know where I’m going now that we are lying down.
I only know lesbian bed sex from what I have read
or seen in porn films and so I try for that. I become
aware that Hel is attempting to signal me with groan
and whimpers but I have no idea if they mean pleasure
or pain. It never occurs to me to just ask her.
I try to be brave and keep my fingers stiff. I push in
and pull out getting ready for my next plunge. I feel her
react, clench against me so I decide that I will continue
with this exact motion and wait for her inevitable
orgasm.
She seems to hover on the edge of coming but
never does. Instead she is panting and looking hard
at me for help. So hard at me, that I am overwhelmed
by the raw animal yearning of it all. Around her neck
bold, blood-red blotches appear. Surely something is
happening?
This promise of her orgasm encourages me to
ignore the fact that my fingers have gone completely
numb. I keep going, in and out regardless of the fact I
can’t feel what I am actually doing, I push on faster and
even harder.
I watch with fascination as she curls and uncurls
around my arms and legs, but whether she is really
enjoying it, I can’t tell. Why didn’t anyone ever mention
it was going to take so fucking long? I lurch inwardly
at every intake of breath that results in a moan hoping
that this is it. We have been literally fucking for hours
and hours and it is now starting to dawn on me that
she is not going to come.
Unable to admit defeat I increase my width and
push on as hard and fast as I possibly can but spasms
of cramp are now surging up through my hand and
I find myself racing with her, as if her orgasm is now
going to happen inside my body.
I fuck her the hardest and most incandescently fast
as I can manage until I fall exhausted and sweating
next to her on the bed trying to convince myself it has

worked; because how are you supposed to know?
Of course, it hasn't.
Nina Simone is still singing us lullabies and
we have enough drugs to keep us enthusiastic for
days, but we cannot talk about what is not working
between us.
We can talk about everything from the arms race
to apartheid but we have no language to express this
simple disappointment. We don't want too much
reality to spoil the image we have of ourselves as
lesbian lovers; after all what else can we be?
I have decided that I am moving in with her.
This is no longer simply a phase I’m going
through, I’m not bisexual or even a tourist just here
to look around and take a few snapshots till my plane
home arrives. No! I’m a dyke’s dyke. I am out, and
way too proud to contemplate that I wasn’t born with
the innate ability to give fantastic lesbian sex.
Then suddenly it is my turn and she is pushing

me backwards and pushing inside me. After what I’ve
been through I am determined to make it easy for
her, so I start orgasming with every single out breath.
I’m coming from the minute her fingers are inside
me, just like in the movies.
Hel has fingers that she can control all the way to
the tips. Absolute musicians. But I am determined
not so much to experience pleasure as to be its
display cabinet. Over and over I go with the loudest
most desperate keening I can manage and just as I am
working up to my fifth orgasmic crescendo she gets
up and starts pulling on her clothes muttering about
"going out for fags".
I pull at the hem of her shirt like a creepy puppy.
I offer her my fags, my spliff, the entire contents of
my wallet if she will just climb back into the dream
with me, but she slams the door on her way out.
It is my first lesson in leaving a woman alone
when she growls but I haven’t learnt it, yet.

Home is a Privilege (Film Still) by Anne Murray

41

Contributor Bios
Erika Arato, is an urban explorer working in
photography under the name UrbextheCat, who shows
her photos strictly on an Instagram platform. Erika
captures both the spirit of adventure as well as the
poignant and poetic spirit of the abandoned. A selfproclaimed “hoarder of memories” she shares her
inspiration for these extraordinary photographs, and her
passion for exploring the ancient underbelly of these
forgotten places. She can be found on Instagram
@UrbextheCat.
Jan Ball started seriously writing poetry and submitting
it for publication in 1998. Since then, she has had 244
poems accepted or published in the U.S., Canada, India
and England (hopefully Australia soon). Published
poems have appeared in: Calyx, Chiron, Connecticut
Review, Main Street Rag, Nimrod, Phoebe and many
other journals. Her poem, my face emerges from my
face, was second runner-up in the spring 2010 contest
issue of So to Speak. In another contest, her poem,
carwash, won the 2011 Betsy Colquitt Award for the
best poem in a current issue of Descant, Fort Worth.
Her two chapbooks, Accompanying Spouse (2011) and
Chapter of Faults (2014), have both been published by
Finishing Line Press. She is a member of The Poetry
Club of Chicago. Jan taught ESL at DePaul University
in Chicago until recently. She lived in Australia for
fifteen years with her Australian husband, Ray Ball.
Her two children, Geoffrey and Quentin, were born in
Brisbane. She is a twin to Jean Helmken and she was a
Franciscan nun for seven years (Sister Jeanclare). When
not writing poetry, working with her personal trainer
at FFC, going to book group or traveling, Jan and her
husband like to cook for friends. These background
experiences infuse her poetry.
Annie Blake is an Australian writer, thinker and
researcher. Her main interests include psychoanalysis,
philosophy and cosmology. Her poem ‘These Grey
Streets’ was nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize by
Vine Leaves Literary Journal. She holds a Bachelor
of Teaching, a Graduate Diploma in Education and is
a member of the C G Jung Society of Melbourne and
Existentialist Society (Melbourne). You can visit her on
http://annieblakethegatherer.blogspot.com.au/ and https://
www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009445206990.

42

Rachel Caruso-Bryant is from Florida and is now a
lecturer at a university in Saudi Arabia. She lives with
her husband and cats and travels the world whenever
she gets the chance. Her poems have appeared in Red
Eft Review, A Lonely Riot, Gravel, The Stark Poetry
Journal, and more.
Martha Clarkson manages corporate workplace
design in Seattle. Her poetry, photography, and fiction
can be found in monkeybicycle, Clackamas Literary
Review, Seattle Review, Alimentum, F-Stop Magazine,
and Hawaii Pacific Review. She is a recipient of a
Pushcart Nomination, and is listed under “Notable
Stories,” Best American Non-Required Reading for
2007 and 2009. She is recipient of best short story,
2012, Anderbo/Open City prize, for “Her Voices, Her
Room.” www.marthaclarkson.com
A graduate of the University of Iowa Nonfiction
Writing Program, Suzanne Cody has published
essays and poetry in various online and print journals,
including Pithead Chapel, Every Pigeon, Crack the
Spine, and Shift: A Journal of Literary Oddities, as
well as serving as co-editor for the Seneca Review
anthology “We Might As Well Call it the Lyric Essay.”
KJ Hannah Greenberg delights in words. Never
tiring of applying whimsy to pastures where
gelatinous wildebeests roam, or of applying solemnity
to the soil where fey hedgehogs play, Hannah’s
been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize
in Literature, and once for The Best of the Net. Her
latest poetry collections are Mothers Ought to Utter
Only Niceties (Unbound CONTENT, 2017), and A
Grand Sociology Lesson (Lit Fest Press, 2016).
Her latest essay collections are Tosh: Select Trash
and Bosh of Creative Writing (Crooked Cat Books,
2017), and Dreams are for Coloring Books: Midlife
Marvels (Seashell Books, 2017). Her newest short
story collection is Can I be Rare, Too? (Bards & Sages
Publishing, 2017).
Jude Harzer is a figurative painter whose works
investigate memories and familial relationships,
specifically between mother and child. Jude is
interested in the maternal figure as purveyor of

personal mythologies and how these inherited stories
perpetuate patterns of thought and behaviors in ones
daughters. Her paintings often feature adolescent
female figures, intended to appear dominant,
emotionally enigmatic and invulnerable. Jude uses
space to suggest a reverse psychological experience
by elevating the children to look down upon or
directly at the viewer. Her work can be found at www.
JudeHarzer.com.
Maj Ikle is proud to be a dykewriter. She was the
winner of the 2014 Asian Cha magazine competition
with the poem “the City Park.” Her story “Loser”
was published in June 2014 by Glitterwolf. Recently
longlisted for Penguin/Random House Write Now
mentoring programme, she is currently writing her
memoirs “Dyke” as part of the project #RebelDykes.
You can subscribe to her work at http://majikle.
blogspot.co.uk/
Laura Ingram is a tiny girl with big glasses and
bigger ideas. Her poetry and prose have been
published in forty-two literary magazines, among
them Gravel Magazine, The Cactus Heart Review, The
Crucible, Blue Marble Review, Scarlet Leaf Review,
Forrest for the Trees, and Teenage Wasteland. One
of Laura’s essays is featured in critically-acclaimed
anthology Hidden Lives published by Bindle and
Glass. Laura has edited professionally for Raven
Publishing company. Harry Styles stopped one of his
shows to give her his water bottle. Laura hopes to be
some sort of bird when she grows up.
Natalie Jones writes poems, prose, and reviews. Her
work has been published online and in print at Eunoia
Review, Haiku Journal, Amoskeag Literary Journal,
The Rusty Nail, and elsewhere.
Béatrice Lebreton, a French native artist now based
in Harlem has been captivated by the arts since early
childhood, discovering a deeply rooted fascination
with drawing, coloring, playing with fabric remnants,
and doing needlework with her grandmother at her
side. She received a Masters of Fine Art from the
École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris
and a Masters in Ethno-aesthetic, majoring in African

Art from La Sorbonne University. Additional details
on her work can be found at www.beatriceart.net.
Mira Martin-Parker earned an MFA in creative
writing at San Francisco State University. Her work
has appeared in various publications, including the
Istanbul Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly,
Mythium, and Zyzzyva.
Denise Massingill is an Austrian-American writer,
born in San Francisco, Ca. She received her BA in
Creative Writing at San Francisco State University,
where she was awarded the Frances Jaffer Poetry Prize
in 2014. She currently lives in Vallejo, Ca, with her
two young daughters and is a substitute teacher in
low-income, urban high schools.
Susan Montag lives in Saint Cloud, Minnesota and
has an MFA degree from Hamline University in Saint
Paul. She is the author of a collection of short fiction,
Nude Ascending a Staircase, Bellowing Ark Press,
2001, and a book called Finding the Way: A Tao for
Down-to-Earth People, Nicolas Hays Press, 2005.
Anne Murray is an artist and curator with an MFA
and MS in Art History from Pratt Institute and a
BFA from Parsons School of Design in Paris. She
has exhibited her work in London, Paris, Shanghai,
Istanbul, Los Angeles, New York, and Budapest. Her
work can be found in the White House Permanent
Collection and the Collection of Prints and
Photographs at the Main Branch of the New York
Public Library. She was the recipient of the Iris and
B. Gerald Cantor Scholarship for Pratt in Venice
and the China Unlimited Creative Contest Award for
Photography, amongst the jurors were Chinese Vice
Premier of Education and Culture, Liu Yandong, and
European Commissioner of Education and Culture,
Tibor Navracsics. Her work can be found at www.
AnneMurrayArtist.com.
Rachel Sager, a native of Southwestern Pennsylvania,
works on the cutting edge of the contemporary mosaic
fine art movement. Her work has been featured
internationally and in cities throughout the U.S.
where she has received multiple Best of Show Awards

43

in juried exhibitions. Rachel’s artwork is collected
with passion by private clients and corporations all
over the world. Her time spent studying with Italian
maestros has shaped her mosaic philosophy, and she
brings these classical techniques home to Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania with its sandstone, limestone, slate, and
coal seams. Details on this and other projects can be
found at www.RachelSagerMosaics.com.
Dasha Ziborova is a graphic novels author, artist and
a muralist. She was born in St. Petersburg, Russia
and came to New York in 1991. Since then she has
illustrated five children’s picture books including
the award-winning Crispin the Terrible published
by Callaway Editions, and In English, of Course and
The Numbers Dance by Gingerbread House. Besides
writing and illustrating books and showing at the
galleries, Dasha has designed and painted a series of
large-scale murals for The Peninsula Hotel’s New
York and Chicago locations; Plaza Hotel, NY; designs
for reliefs for the Waldorf Astoria, NY and designs for
over 30 murals for Atlantic Center in Brooklyn. She is
also currently working on Real Time In Ink, a series of
short graphic stories about people, places, parenting,
art, music, cats, food, travel, to occasional politics
and scary crazy Russians. https://www.realtimeinink.
com More on the Chronicles of Lost Wars and other
projects can be found at www.dashaziborova.com
Lena Ziegler is a recent graduate of Western
Kentucky University’s MFA program and is currently
pursuing her PhD at Bowling Green State University.
She is the co-founder and co-editor of the literary
journal The Hunger and her work has been published
in Red Earth Review, Miracle Monocle, Harpoon
Review, Breathe Free Press and others, and is
forthcoming in Fredericksburg Literary and Arts
Review.